Forum:2014-12-03 (Wednesday)
Discussion for comic for . The wiki pages don't just write themselves, join in on the fun. ---- I hope I'm wrong, and I probably am, but this seems as if it could be the final page of this volume, which the Foglios said was "coming up really soon now" a while ago. (And, yes, I know this completely contradicts my previous attempt at a prediction.) -- William Ansley (talk) 06:13, December 3, 2014 (UTC) They'd better put a stake through her heart. Mskala (talk) 07:26, December 3, 2014 (UTC) : not a bad idea, but there's still a chance that she's taken over the brother's body. Finn MacCool (talk) 14:11, December 3, 2014 (UTC) Well, fiddlesticks! Wikia has made yet another unnecessary and annoying change! Anyone know how to run a search for something now? -- Billy Catringer (talk) 19:53, December 3, 2014 (UTC) : You should be seeing a white bar across the top of your screen with a search bar in it.--Geoduck42 (talk) 01:19, December 4, 2014 (UTC) Is anyone else bothered that it's not "Lady Selnikov'a'"? -ov is a male ending (like English apostrophe-'s'), -ova is the female equivalent. If you gonna use Slavic sounding names, use them right. Tarvek (talk) 00:30, December 4, 2014 (UTC) :I don't know that sticking to the Slavic conventions wil be worth the trouble it will cause. Do you speak a Slavic language? I don't. -- Billy Catringer (talk) 00:47, December 4, 2014 (UTC) : well, if the family has moved to a part of the world with another (non-slavic) language, dropping the separate female ending would be rather normal. Finn MacCool (talk) 01:13, December 4, 2014 (UTC) : This is a steampunk/gaslamp fantasy in an alternate universe. No, I'm not bothered that it doesn't strictly follow the conventions of our world. --AndyAB99 (talk) 16:16, December 4, 2014 (UTC) :: Well, I do speak a Slavic language, one of the smaller ones, and of course this is a fantasy -- but the professors have been pretty good at following some realistic linguistic conventions of an alternate-history central and eastern Europe. Note the German/Latin "Europa" rather than English/French "Europe". Note too the full and correctly transliterated Russian name of Boris Dolokhov, along with the proper address "gospodin" when addressed by the Jäger General. "Gospodin" = "Mister", used btw in this wiki as a title for Gospodin Borislav, another Slavic name -- so clearly we're in territory where there's a fair sized population of Slavic origin. And I'm only talking of gender, which is commonly expressed in proper names and pretty easy to accomodate -- I'd consider it unreasonable to expect, say, full Slavic noun and verb inflections, which are context specific and would be dropped in translation to English anyway. :: Given that the Selnikovs' first names (Rudolf and Margarella/Margolotta) are Germanic, I find Finn MacCool's interpretation the likeliest -- they're a German/Transylvanian/whatever noble family with Slavic roots who dropped the endings when they lost connection with the language. But if, say, Boris Dolokhov's mother shows up and she's not "Gospozha Dolokhova", I'll complain again :D Tarvek (talk) 23:54, December 5, 2014 (UTC) :::You do speak a Slavic language then. Do the women change their family names after they marry? Or is the end change restricted to the father-daghter relationship as with Ivanov and Ivanova? I am guessing that Ivanov means "son of Ivan." --Billy Catringer (talk) 01:26, December 6, 2014 (UTC) :::And I think you and some other fans take this ''Heterodyne Story ''waaay too seriously. :-) AndyAB99 (talk) 01:42, December 6, 2014 (UTC) ::::Billy -- Ivanov simply means "of Ivan", and there is also a father's name ("patronymic") that shows up as a middle name, but that's another matter. As for last names, yes, women traditionally change them when they marry, but the ending comes from gender, not from marriage. Names that end with -ov, -ev, -in or such, which is basically "apostrophe-s", function as adjectives & agree with the gender of the person. A woman may be born as Ivanova because her father's last name is Ivanov, then marry a Rostov and change her last name to Rostova. (This doesn't happen in all Slavic languages, but it does in those where adjective-like surnames are common, such as Russian & Bulgarian.) ::::Andy -- hmm, look who's talking, I could look up some of your past comments dissecting why one or another speculation about the plot was or wasn't realistic :D The reason fantasy works, I think, is that various kinds of obsessive types get hooked on it, and everyone's got their own pet details to obsess about, right? Tarvek (talk) 17:38, December 6, 2014 (UTC)